Rarely are lies portrayed so blatently.

Thirteen games without a victory. Loss to Köln. At home.

I saw this and just had to laugh:

"Out of control". That’s how the tour book described the mayhem of Karneval in Köln. It was more than enough to pique my interests and I found myself in the middle of the madness after a 6.5 hour hitchhiking ride with the Speaker to the Press for the Berlin faction of the FDP political party.

…because you can never have too many pictures of that Austin Skyline. A buddy of my Uncle’s took this picture.

So what’s the story behind this guy? You tell me. The one with the best story wins a free beer (Sterni of course).

Yes, the ball was marvelous darling, thank you for asking… That old thing? That suit was just something I had lying around but yes, I was thinking I was looking pretty good in it myself. I got myself primped up in the room, told the guy in the mirror that he was a pretty good looking guy, then ran downstairs to find that everyone else was wearing tuxedos… Well, what could I do?

Stumbled out of bed for a teaching gig early in the morning, stumbled back into bed immediately following the short gig, and tried my best to not leave its warm confines until now. I’ve been fairly successful in my attempts and have savored every minute of the re-coop time.

Chance called me on the 30th of December, the night before we planned to set out. His car wasn’t going to make it, neither was his fiancee, but that wasn’t going to slow us down in the least bit. It was just going to be us, a rental car and a considerable less amount of money in my wallet headed for Pasadena, California, as we were joining the University of Texas Longhorns in their quest for a national championship in the Rose Bowl.

It seems the Berlin Texas Exes took care of business for me while I was gone. The sherriff is back in town however and is currently locked down in an intense battle with jet lag.

The Arcade Fire and The Beta Band and Mando Diao and the new Beck CD and Death Cab for Cutie and the Libertines and when they aren’t together Babyshambles and Franz Ferdinand and Spoon and the Bravery and the Flaming Lips and the Streets and Troubled Hubble and Bach’s Weihnachts Oratorium and and and…..

In other news, a bomb was found on Berlin’s main boulevard Unter den Linden yesterday. It wasn’t more than 3 meters behind the statue of Friedrich the Great which marks access into the formal royal grounds of the city. No terrorists involved in this scheme though. Construction workers uncovered an unexploded 500-pound bomb the Tommys dropped on the city a little more than 60 years ago.  It was detonated in a controlled explosion and life continued at its normal pace. The intriguing things from my view was the non-chalance involved in the public’s reaction. From what I can gather is this happens about every 6 months or so. Just not normally in the heart of a city. I hate nazis.

Thanks for the ride Texas! Congratulations to the team — I guess even nice guys finish first every-once-in-a-while.

If things work out I’ll be seeing y’all in Pasadena.

I got to talking to a good buddy of mine from back home in the states. We discussed the veritable range of conversation points: work, play, the lackluster performance the Horns put up against the Ags, and of course the inevitable flash point regarding the female species. Talk then moved on to the other struggles encountered in life. It hasn’t been all roses here on this side of the pond. There is the constant uncertainty regarding the immigration offices, the eternal frustrations involved in the job search and the overall frustrations involving income and companionship.

A 24-year-old Army soldier from Houston was killed the day before Thanksgiving during combat in Iraq, the Department of Defense said Monday.Sgt. William B. Meeuwsen was one of two soldiers who died last Wednesday when their unit came under direct fire near Baghdad. The other soldier was identified as Staff Sgt. Aram J. Bass, 25, of Niagara Falls, N.Y.